WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 183 



of the huge creatures that has been lying buried, for any- 

 thing we know, since the days of the Great Pyramid, or 

 even of the first Emperor of China, may be seen floating 

 on the stream. On one occasion a fat, comfortable 

 mammoth, thirteen feet high, with a thick hairy coat, and 

 wide open eyes, was found standing where the earth had 

 given way under him in one of the marshes in north-east 

 Siberia. He had been frozen in the spot where he fell, 

 and had remained there, no one knows how long, till the 

 whole surface of the land had been torn up by the raging- 

 waters of the swollen river. The Eussian who discovered 

 the mammoth longed to bring it home ; but the body, when 

 exposed to the warm air, soon began to fall away, and all 

 he could do was to cut off the tusks, and examine his 

 food, of which traces were still existing in the stomach. 

 By these he made out that the mammoth had feasted 

 for the last time on young fir cones and pine needles, 

 and then, well fed and happy, had gone to his death. 

 The same fate very nearly befell his discoverers too ; for, 

 in their excitement, the men did not notice that the 

 ground was giving way under them also, and had not 

 the boat been luckily at hand, the river Indigirka would 

 have carried men as well as mammoth out to sea. 1 



In searching for remains of fossil animals, we must 

 never forget that the topmost rocks are always, except 

 where they have been heaved up by accident, the newest 

 and latest formed, and, from this fact, it is possible to 

 tell which creatures lived at the same time, and which 

 succeeded the other. Now, ages before there were any 

 mammoths on the earth there existed a monster very like 

 him in appearance, but differing from him in three ways. 

 First, he had no hair on his body ; then his teeth were 

 simpler than those of the mammoth, and though, like him, 

 the animal lived on branches and trees of various kinds, he 

 could grind rougher and coarser food. Lastly, instead of 



1 Extinct Mounters. 



